Re Apocalypto:
I interpreted it to mean more and more civilized people were arriving. The nail in the coffin of human sacrifice.
I have a problem when the murder of strangers was called sacrifice.
Sacrifice implies giving up something dear to you. Like one of your cows or goats to the gods for a communal ritual. You can no longer get milk or eventually the meat. You sacrificed something.
Killing strangers or your enemies on an alter is just murder.
Then the Spaniards showed up and murdered these people.
Ok! I wondered. When I saw that my thoughts went to the theory of the white man destroying peaceful natives with small pox when they arrived from Europe.
I tried watching that movie a few years ago stopped about a third of the way in. Could not get past the brutality.
I interpreted it to mean more and more civilized people were arriving. The nail in the coffin of human sacrifice.
That has a familiar ring to it.
You mean the White Christians [liberals] arriving to save the savage darkies from themselves through colonialism?